North Dakota native 'fitting in' with Legacy 76 soccer teammates

WILLIAMSBURG — As a child growing up in the harsh winters of Fargo, N.D., Jacob Weiler relished the days when the snowplows rumbled down his street near Fargo South High School.

When the truck's ice-scraper finished rooting up the frozen top layer of ice and grit, Weiler raced out to the road to kick his soccer ball against the curb, endlessly honing his first touch.

"It would pop up and force me to be clean with my touches," Weiler said. "Soccer's a self-taught game for me. I learned a lot out there."

That's an understatement. Weiler, 19, has spent more hours on the road traveling to and from games than he cares to remember. Just over a year removed from his Fargo home, the redshirt freshman from the University of Nebraska at Omaha is using a Newport News connection to play at the highest level he can this summer with Legacy 76, a National Premier Soccer League team based in Williamsburg.

Weiler kept a ball at his feet when he was as young as 10 years old and "started getting more serious" by signing up for travel teams during the summers before recreation play in the fall. But Weiler's first real development came when his uncle, Dan Weiler, invited him to play on "Little Feat FC," a hodge-podge amateur team made up of former and current college players and burgeoning high school hopefuls.

Jacob started training with the team at 13.

"It took him a while to get used to that speed of play," said Dan Weiler, who coaches women's soccer at Christopher Newport University. "But he's a very disciplined and motivated player. He'd play 24 hours a day if you let him."

As Weiler grew, the defender had issues adapting to his competition. Weiler was naturally tall, with long legs, but his quicker, smaller competition was finding ways to beat him in a foot race.

Trips home from those less-than-stellar performances weren't fun, his father David Weiler said.

"When Dad asked me how I thought I did, I would just be like 'fine,' or whatever," Jacob Weiler said. "I'd be frustrated and he'd say, 'well, how can we deal with it?'"

"He was very hard on himself," David Weiler said. "It took a culmination of a number of years to be able to accept that he's going to make mistakes and not every opportunity hinges on one moment in time."

By the time Weiler was in eighth grade, the recruiting trips around the Midwest were in full swing. While he was just breaking into his high school team at Fargo South High in the fall, Weiler needed to focus on attracting attention for college.

That meant leaving North Dakota to go where the recruiters would be looking, as far as Nebraska, Michigan, Ohio and Kansas.

Weiler sent emails, letters and YouTube highlight reels, but couldn't seem to attract a good offer.

Finally, someone gave him a shot. Jason Mims, the newly hired coach from Nebraska, said he liked what Weiler showed at a summer camp in Omaha before Weiler's senior year.

"I told him that we'd like to give him a chance," Mims said of his walk-on defender."We were a brand new program at the time and for kids that we were going to take a chance on, we could do that with him."

Weiler was sold. He finished his high school education a semester early to join his new teammates in spring 2013 before taking a redshirt to get more practice under his belt.

"Coach took a huge risk and took a chance on me," Weiler said. "Being from Fargo, there aren't a lot of options for high level soccer around there. Nobody cares that I do well in North Dakota, that's why we traveled so much. I can never thank him enough for that."

After a season of watching his UNO Mavericks from the sidelines, Weiler told his uncle that he was looking for opportunities to play this summer. Dan Weiler got in touch with Eric Dutt, a player-coach with Legacy 76. The NPSL is considered to be the fourth tier of American soccer.

"We took him sight unseen coming into the team," Dutt said. "He's integrated himself really well and become a leader for us in the back."

Weiler took his freshman final exams early just to get a few days home with his family before jetting out to Virginia on May 7 in order to participate in the team's first practice the next day. Ten days later, Weiler scored the expansion team's first goal of the season in a 2-1 loss to Chesterfield United FC.

Travel is all in a day's work for Weiler. He's been on the road since the beginning.

"This is a very big opportunity for me," he said after Legacy's 1-0 win last weekend against ASA Charge. "I've gotten lucky enough to do this. That takes a lot of hard work on the practice field and being in the right place at the right time. I feel like I'm fitting in here."

Legacy 76 is ranked third in the NPSL's Mid Atlantic Conference with one win and a loss heading into Friday's game against D.C. United U23 in Fairfax.